My birthday is coming up soon and I decided it is time to get a PC to get back into Flight Simulation. Do you think these specs will be good enough to run PMDG with scenery addons.

 

Processor-

i5-3570k

 

Graphics Card-

EVGA NVIDIA GTX 680 Superclocked 2GB

 

Cooling-

Corsair Hydro H60

 

RAM-

8GB (4x2) Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600

 

MOBO-

ASUS P8Z77-V LX

 

PSU-

750 Watt- Corsair CMPSU-750TXV2

 

 

 

 

SSD or HDD?

HDD-

2 TB Hard Drive -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm,  6.0Gb/s

I would highly recommend an SSD, specifically for the start up speed of Windows and the overall quickness of moving/copying when dealing with large files. A typical HDD is good for storage, but an SSD for your OS can definitely be useful. I have a 120 GB Corsair Force GT that I use for Windows, Skype, FSX, and a few small programs and files. Everything else is on a standard hard drive.

Alright, I'll look into it. I will probably get a SSD at a later date if not with the original system.

I would sggest the H100i cooler - far more effective at cooling that i5 which you will want to take to 4.2 at least. The 680 is overkill unless you have lots of $$ to toss around. The money difference would be better spent on a SSD 120 for Win7 and a minimum 200GB+ SSD for FSX. The standard HD used strictly for storage of files, etc. A 660 OC or TI will save you lots of $ and you will see very little performance difference from a more expensive 680. The smooth and fast performane of the properly cooled CPU and the SSD drives will be huge though compared to your current hardware decision.

Yes that's a good setup when it comes to price/performance. You can spend more money on most components and get small performance increases for various amount of extra money. And the GPU is by no mean a waste of money if you use a lot of SGSS AA and clouds, a GTX660 would be quite a bit cheaper but also give less performance in that scenario. I wouldn't go less than GTX660 for better price/performance. On the other hand a Titan would handle high SGSS settings better but be a lot more expensive... When it comes to SSD, you're most likely better off economically by one larger one for both OS and FSX main installation than getting 2 separate SSDs. When it comes to SSDs its fine to have both on the same disk. That's not the case if you use HDDs.

I changed my drives around and came up with a setup with a 120GB Sandisk SSD and a 500GB HD. Is 120GB enough for FSX and the OS?

120GB is enough for OS+FSX+a few add on aircrafts, it won't leave a huge space for scenery and other games. It all depends on how much other things you want to fit in. Never the less it's a very good starting setup that can be upgraded. You can start putting scenery on the HDD when you run out of space on the SSD. That setup is still much preferred to having OS and FSX on two separate HDDs.

I changed my drives around and came up with a setup with a 120GB Sandisk SSD and a 500GB HD. Is 120GB enough for FSX and the OS?

 

I have been using two SSD's for about 18 months now. I have a 65Gb SSD for Win7 with a constant surplus of about 10Gb and a 256Gb SSD for FSX. Two points I'll make, the 65Gb SSD for the OS is ample, providing you only use it for FSX and you don't store gazzilions of screencaptures on it! As for the FSX drive it completely depends on how much of a simmer you are in the way of addon purchases. I am up to about 215 Gb on my 256Gb SSD and am now looking to replace it in the near future with a 500Gb SSD. As with anything FSX related, it's always best to purchase the most you can afford at the time, simply because you are future proofing it as much as possible.

I have a Hybrid drive on my system, part SSD part HDD at 750gig is more than good enough for me and it's fast too.

My birthday is coming up soon and I decided it is time to get a PC to get back into Flight Simulation. Do you think these specs will be good enough to run PMDG with scenery addons.

 

Processor-

i5-3570k

 

Graphics Card-

EVGA NVIDIA GTX 680 Superclocked 2GB

 

Cooling-

Corsair Hydro H60

 

RAM-

8GB (4x2) Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600

 

MOBO-

ASUS P8Z77-V LX

 

PSU-

750 Watt- Corsair CMPSU-750TXV2

 

Those specs will run it just fine, I have pretty much the same but graphics card you list is better than mine.

 

It might be a bit late if you have already got your new hardware but I chose to get the MSi Z77 Mpower mobo as this will overclock that 3570k to 4.2Ghz at the touch of a button like I did with mine.

Just changed my 120GB SSD for 1TB HDD. 120GB SSB was not enough for my fsx only. It depends what addons you want to use, i have a lot of ORBX and i plan to buy ORBX world when it comes. 

 

I have now 120GB Corsair force 3 SSD only for OS

1TB WD black Only for FSX

 

And one more HDD for other programs, applications etc

 

I would stay with gtx 680, it's much better for HD textures - especialy REX clouds. My 560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC was "killed" many times in bad weather. It is recommended to have at least gtx580 or higher - 680 etc

 

You can compare graphic cards performance here: http://www.hwcompare.com/13161/geforce-gtx-580-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti/

Those specs will run it just fine, I have pretty much the same but graphics card you list is better than mine.

 

It might be a bit late if you have already got your new hardware but I chose to get the MSi Z77 Mpower mobo as this will overclock that 3570k to 4.2Ghz at the touch of a button like I did with mine.

I haven't gotten the hardware yet. Still finalizing what I want to get. I decided to get the 4GB GTX 680 and i7-3770k and ASUS Z77 Sabertooth MOBO, which does the overclocking with one click as well. Also got a 250GB Samsung SSD for OS and FSX and 1TB HDD. I probably will be getting it in 2-4 weeks time. Thanks for the input. 

Very nice, I am sure you will enjoy the FSX experience with that hardware.